Inside Gaming - Fox3D

In Inside Gaming, we invite Sketchfab game developers to talk about their work. We asked the team from Fox3D Studios to talk about their upcoming project, “Subnautica.” Stay tuned, because we’ll be hearing from a different member of the team each day this week. Today’s insights are from Sergey Solovyev.

About Fox3D

Fox3D Entertainment is a team of industry veterans and friends who love new challenges and strive to make great entertainment products at a world class level. Fox3D has worked on over 70 AAA titles including the best selling “Natural Selection 2”, “Halo 4”, “Dragon Age” series and the “Batman: Arkham Origins” and “Killzone” series, among others. We started working with Unknown Worlds Entertainment back to 2008 helping to bring the character work of Natural Selection 2 to the next level.

We want to share some words from some key members of Fox3D Studios’ team, who have been working for over 2 years on the Subnautica project for the talented studio Unknown Worlds Entertainment in sunny San Francisco. During this time we created a large quantity of assets of various complexity from huge floating giants and submarines, to an underwater knife and first-aid kit (it’s impossible to survive without it in a game). Now Subnautica is officially published on Steam Early Access.

In our daily work on the project, we use Trello to control our tasks and programs for three-dimensional modeling and texturing, Sketchfab to accelerate the development of graphic content and demonstrate it to the whole team, and a private forum to work with tasks.

Now, talented Fox3D team member Sergey Solovyev will introduce himself.

Hi, my name is Sergey Solovyev. At the very beginning on the Subnautica, I was faced with a task – to build our Fox3D team into an effective working art resource for the project. Although the team members never gathered under one office roof, my goal was to make them work as well as normal game developer teams.

Worldwide Development

After a number of approaches and brainstorming sessions, we understood that for such a big project as ours, we needed the highest possible visualization of workflow and the creation of one general work space in order for efficient remote working. This meant creating something like a virtual office that copies the functionality of a real physical office. We built work processes in such a way that a person from anywhere on the globe, who has a laptop and an Internet connection, could easily learn about the development stage of any asset, find out what was updated, and if necessary, send comments about what else should be done. Such an approach demanded decision making about a remote working field, which is why we spent such a long time searching for the new services that would be as easy and convenient as possible.

Sketchfab Online Everywhere

In this case, Sketchfab was very suitable for us. There is nothing better than giving an art director the possibility to spin around, on his laptop screen, a finished 3D model of a monster, spaceship or main character of the game. Whether in a cafe, house, or in the office, his work is equally effective – he can see an exact model, the same way as it will look in game, and immediately give us feedback about it. And since Sketchfab supports normal maps, spec, gloss and hdri lighting, it was completely suitable for us and the Subnautica project. All of these features are important for the project.

We enjoy working on Subnautica, and like the idea of creating a colourful, cartoon style underwater world. It is so exciting to participate in creation of such a tremendous and unusual world from an art-concept to the game. We are inspired by how unusual and scenic the locations and creatures look. It’s probably a little immodest to say, but I think I have to say it: as I see it, Subnautica is the first fully underwater game, and it actually looks great! And it wouldn’t have happened without such a great community. The feedback we receive inspires our artists and pushes them to do the artwork better and better each time.

I would like to thank all those wonderful people who are supporting us with attention to our artwork. It is always thrilling to log in Sketchfab and find new likes, comments, and a growing number of followers.

Thanks people, you rock! Many thanks to the Sketchfab team for making all these magnificent opportunities become real tools. See you in Subnautica, divers!